PG&E residential customers can expect a 5.8 percent increase in their gas and electricity bills starting in September after approval by state regulators Thursday of the utility’s request for rate hikes.
California’s highways are in dreadful shape and need hundreds of billions of dollars in maintenance and reconstruction. Boosting motorists’ costs by more than $2 billion a year without the money being used for highway work would make financing vital repairs even less likely.
Given the heavy financial impact of placing fuel under the cap-and-trade program, it should face legislative scrutiny and direct up-or-down votes, rather than being imposed by an unelected board.
Both Chevron and its detractors claimed at least partial victory Wednesday, after city leaders approved the oil giant’s long-sought effort to begin a $1 billion upgrade of its century-old refinery, the largest in Northern California.
In a vote that could highlight the difficulty in implementing additional measures to reduce carbon emissions ahead of global climate talks next year in Paris, Australia’s Senate on Thursday voted 39-32 to repeal a politically divisive carbon emissions price that contributed to the fall from power of three Australian leaders since it was first suggested in 2007.
Absent changes, gasoline and diesel fuel beginning in January will be covered under a state auction program that requires petroleum companies to obtain carbon emission credits in order to continue to operate as they gradually choke off their greenhouse gases. The minimum cost of those credits, or allowances, is unknown, but experts believe they may be in the range of $12-to-$13 each, with each credit covering a ton of carbon emissions. Millions of credits may be sold and that cost is likely to be passed on at the pump. During a recent sale, emission allowances were selling at $11.34.
California’s high energy costs and environmental initiatives pushing green energy are making it more expensive for businesses to operate in the state, a new report finds, exacting a significant toll on low- and middle-class communities.
Energy, the economy and the environment – the three are inextricably linked. Energy prices impact the economy, but energy production impacts the environment.
This important interrelationship was understood to be fundamental to the formation of energy policy when each of us served as governor of California. It was true then, and it is true now. Because of this, effective energy policy in our state requires a careful balancing of coequal economic and environmental interests.
Nine Assembly and Senate members, led by Assemblyman Henry T. Perea (D-Fresno), want to delay putting motor vehicle fuels under the state’s system for buying and selling the right to release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Democratic fissures over California’s cap-and-trade mandates deepened on Thursday, with a key moderate Democrat introducing a bill to push back a looming rule expected to cause a spike in prices at the pump.
As Americans drive to barbecues and the beach in coming days, they will be paying more for gas than on any Independence Day weekend since the record highs of 2008.
A gallon of unleaded gasoline cost an average of $3.67 Wednesday, almost 20 cents above last year’s price, according to automobile club AAA. In California, drivers have been paying well over $4 a gallon for weeks.
Lawmakers, including State Senators Mike Morrell, R-Rancho Cucamonga, and Norma Torres, D-Chino, spoke out against a program they say would amount to a new gas tax at a press conference held at the Pacific Mountain Logistics facility in Ontario on Wednesday. They were joined by representatives from areas of business, including Gayle Covey, executive director of the San Bernardino Farm Bureau, and Tracy Rafter, CEO of the Los Angeles Business Federation.
Heading into the Fourth of July weekend, a gallon of regular gasoline on the West Coast averages a penny over $4, the highest price of any region in the country. Costly Alaskan oil is a key factor in these high gas prices, and that oil is gradually running out.
In a conference call with oil industry analysts in late 2012, Mike Wirth, a Chevron Corp. executive, took stock of California’s greenhouse gas reduction policies and warned that the state’s plan to expand its controversial cap-and-trade program to vehicle fuels in 2015 would result in higher prices at the pump.
California drivers are going to see a bump at the pump starting Jan. 1 – with a good chunk of the money going to kick-start Gov. Jerry Brown’s struggling high-speed rail project.
One would think that the nearly universal experience of buying electricity – not to mention its indispensable economic importance – would make politicians reluctant to mess with it.
But one would be wrong. The Capitol’s denizens incessantly tinker with the state’s power system, usually in ways that cost consumers more money. And it’s why Californians are already paying power rates that are among the nation’s very highest and headed even higher very soon.